How was I supposed to know that…?
Decapitated on February 15, 2026.
How was I supposed to know that setting my house on fire would burn it down?
That eating the hotdogs I found under the refrigerator would make me sick?
That the candles are supposed to go on top of the cake?
That “for external use only” means I shouldn’t eat that stick of deodorant?
That a sledgehammer is the wrong tool for unclogging my toilet!?
That using an egg beater as a sex toy would turn out poorly!?
That all those warning labels on chainsaws aren’t just disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories to deprive us of our right to swing a chainsaw!?!?
This morning my butter was too hard to smear on the toast. I tried—oh, I tried!—but the result was bread mutilated beyond recognition. I ate it anyway. And that’s when things began to go horribly, gorribly wrong.
Walking down the sidewalk always fills me with nameless dread. What if I step in a sinkhole? What if the concrete suddenly catches fire? What if a piano or an anvil falls out a window and lands on me? And all those cracks and their ever-present threat to my dear old Mamårp’s back! I hate sidewalks.
I wondered where that decapitated body found in the Whatanagawatchee Swamp last Tuesday came from. I wondered if I could turn that into more of a meandering, garden-path sentence. The silithicine creatures lurking in the grottoes down there were likely culprits. But not the man with the unlabeled chainsaw. Not him. Never him!